It doesn’t need to be said. I don’t need to be told when my feet are already moving. Running. I’m sprinting down the winding path.
Somewhere at the back of my mind, I’m registering that this has to be a dream. How else do my feet know exactly where to go? How do they know to slow when I reach the slick stone steps plunging downward into a cavern as wide as a city block? How do they know to skirt around the deep, blue pool dug into the center where shapes shift and move beneath the surface with graceful glides?
My brain doesn’t even stop to rationalize that the figures have human bodies, or that I am literally running through a cavernous cave. My focus is a pinprick, a tunnel moving me across the room, up a steep incline and through another gap in the wall.
Rain patters over an iron bridge capped with steep arches. The ground glistens as the water spills over and down into a heavy fog churning far below.
I dash through it.
It dampens my blanket and turns slick beneath my feet, but I don’t stop until I’m half running, half crawling up the other side. Over black stones and mossy dirt. I throw myself over the ridge and down more stairs.
“Rina!”
My name is a bellow. A deafening roar that shakes the ground beneath me. It claps across the heavens with the crack of thunder. It’s the kind of sound that would make a sane person turn and run. Flee from whatever is calling her.
But I’m sobbing.
I’m crying before I can even name the emotion swallowing me whole. I can barely see through the tears as I tumble down a winding pathway, through arched doorways and an ocean of forest guiding my way.
And there he is.
At the very end.
A creature almost resembling a man from a distance, but radiating with a power, a darkness that swells around him.
“Vaelith.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
One of us moves.
I can’t be sure who, but I slam into his chest. We collide in the center of the pathway, between a set of arches and he finds my hair with his hands and claims my mouth. My arms wind around his neck. My legs around his hips.
Everything calms.
All the noises in my head. The world. Everything ceases to exist as my soul is put back together. The tempo of his heart wraps around mine, lulling it to match. To beat in sync.
“My love,” he breathes into my mouth. “You’re home.”
I have no words outside the need to cry. To weep and hold him and never let go. I have no sense beyond the familiar feel of him.
When he claws away my damp blanket and runs his hands across my naked skin, I tighten my hold. I kiss him harder.
Fuck breathing.
He groans a long, delicious purr that I greedily swallow. That I lap with my tongue.
Love you,I want so badly to tell him, but that would require space, and I’ve already been without him for so long. But he understands. He doesn’t need me to tell him when he’s pinned me to a pillar. The head of his cock nudges my opening. Prodding. Testing.
“Yes,” I breathe against his tongue.
He pulls me down on him. Fills me on his heavy girth. He tastes my weak whine with the invasion of his tongue. His cock stretches my walls with such sweet agony I unleash a guttural groan.
I hit his knot.
My eyes fly open and I find myself caught in the ebony vacuums of endless darkness. The space between trees during nightfall.
“Do it,” I choke out, nibbling on his bottom lip.
